11) The Nineties, Part One

A few days before the end of the Eighties, I happened to meet a girl named Karen. She more or less shared my religious beliefs and didn't seem to mind dating a guy from a foreign country. Before the end of 1990, we would be married.

We took a number of trips to Toronto, to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) and the CN Tower and to all the tourist destinations in the Niagara Falls area. We went all over the area before and after our wedding. To Rochester, NY, Erie, PA. To Brantford, Cambridge, Kitchener and, London in Ontario. A place to go on a Saturday was to have lunch in the food court of the Jackson Square Mall in Hamilton and then spend some time in the adjoining library.

In the news, the Iran-Iraq War had ended a couple of years before. Kuwait was a smaller neighbor of Iraq, very rich in oil. I had thought Kuwait was in support of Iraq, it was an Arab country and an Iranian missile had landed in Kuwait during the war. I was unsure whether it was intentional or not.

I was surprised to now read that Iraqi military forces were massing on the border of Kuwait. Still, it could be just some type of maneuvering. But on August 2, 1990, the newspaper headlines read "Iraq Sweeps Into Kuwait".

Saddam Hussein wanted to reincorporate Kuwait into Iraq. The ruling family of Kuwait, al-Sabah, went into exile and made a plea to the U.N for help.

Horrible stories emerged, supposedly from within Kuwait, about how the occupation force was treating the Kuwaitis. What Saddam's soldiers were allegedly doing to Kuwaiti girls. There was a scene on the news of a Kuwaiti man with his hands chained together behind his back and suspended by his hands on some construction equipment and left high up in the air for hours, as punishment for some infraction.

Certainly there were some abuses going on, but it was difficult to verify exactly which stories were true.

The result was Desert Shield, to prevent further incursion into Saudi Arabia. Then when enough of a force was in place, Desert Shield became Desert Storm and liberated Kuwait. But it was only the beginning of a chain of events that is still going on today.

Unexpectedly, Rajiv Gandhi of India was assassinated. He was the son of Indira Ghandi, who had also been assassinated, in 1984, by Sikh bodyguards after the raid on the Golden Temple. Rajiv had assumed the position of prime minister at that point.

During a campaign, a woman who was a supporter of the Tamil Tigers approached Gandhi with a bomb strapped to her back. She bowed and detonated the bomb, killing him. The Tamil Tigers are the militant force of the Tamils, a minority in neighboring Sri Lanka. Gandhi had sent Indian troops there. The civil war in Sri Lanka went on until recently.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa in 1990. He had been in jail for many years for agitating for black majority rights. It would not be long before he was president of the country. But at the time, the majority was not unified. There was the Xhosa, which included Mandela and whose organization was the ANC (African National Congress) but also the Zulu, who were rivals of the Xhosa and whose organization was known as Inkatha.

The final major news of 1990 was that Germany was reunited into one country. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl really rose to the occasion to handle this. The capital was moved from Bonn back to the traditional site of Berlin.

Karen and I spent eight days out in Vancouver as a honeymoon. I met two relatives I had never seen before. The "subway" in Vancouver is actually above the ground and it provides a magnificent view of the city. A subway fare includes a boat ride across to North Vancouver. From the city, Vancouver Island can be seen off in the distance.

We were low on money to go on honeymoon. But I had a mass of books and records that I was willing to part with. There was a market on weekends nearby and in my first effort at selling things, I made more than enough money to go on honeymoon.

Back in the early Eighties, I had thought of opening a store buying and selling used books. Records are a little bit more problematic because it is sometimes difficult to tell if a used record skips or if it is scratched.

I got laid off from Carborundum Abrasives, which manufactured sandpaper, in the autumn of 1990. I got a job at one factory and then to Spaulding Composites (or Spaulding Fiber) in Tonawanda. It was a very old factory and I worked there for just over a year until it also began laying off people and ultimately closed down. This would be my last factory job.

In the summer of 1991, Karen and I took a trip to Vermont, Montreal and, Ottawa. Montreal really made an impression on me. I was surprised at how French it looked. I don't mean just the spoken language, but the buildings as well. There were cylindrical turrets topped by spires everywhere.

We walked all around downtown Montreal. Through McGill University, where so many of Canada's prime ministers were educated, and to see the famous view of the city from Mount Royal.

In Ottawa was the Chateau Laurier, which looks like a castle out of a fairy tale, a short distance from the Canadian Parliament Buildings.

Our favorite movie was Jesus of Nazareth and I wrote my first real book; The Bible And The Nineties.

We made a trip around Lake Erie in the autumn of 1991, starting early in the morning and stopping in Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and, Erie.

In the summer of 1991, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev was briefly overthrown in a coup by hard-line Communists. Gorbachev spent the three days of the coup in a dacha and Boris Yeltsin made a name for himself by standing atop a tank and refusing to give in. This brief coup certainly destabilized the country further and before the end of the year, the Soviet Union would officially break up.

Many people in the U.S. had lost factory jobs. The government began a program in which someone who lost a job due to foreign competition could go back to college, or other training for a period of eighteen months. The program would pay for the training and for normal unemployment benefits while undergoing the training.

I took a test and was qualified. One stipulation was that the curriculum which I chose had to be approved first, we could not sign up for training in just anything. I decided on lab technician training at the local college, Niagara County Community College, where I had gone before. Lab technician work was not what I truly wanted to do, but it was what would be approved.

I began college for the spring semester of 1992. I had been laid off from Spaulding Composites a short time before, but I actually qualified for this program due to the loss of my job at Carborundum Abrasives.

On March 16, 1992, Karen and I were driving back home from the North Tonawanda Library. We were on Niagara Falls Boulevard just east of Niagara Falls Airport. We lived in an apartment building across the street from the airport and were a couple of minutes from being home.

Karen was driving. I was finishing up reading the newspaper. Karen said something like "I wonder what that car is trying to do". Everything suddenly went black.

The next thing I knew, we were off to the side of the road. I called Karen's name but she didn't answer. There was a strong scent of gasoline. I got myself out of the car quickly and went around to get Karen out. Half of my face felt warm while the other half felt cold.

Suddenly, there were flashing lights everywhere. The hood of our car was open and a fireman was doing something to the engine. I was put in an ambulance. I saw what must have been the other driver, he had a cloth bandage around his eyes. My first thought was that I didn't have any health insurance and I shouted this out. But injuries in car accidents are covered by the auto insurance.

Next, I was in a hospital somewhere. I did not know where I was. A nurse told me that I had been in an accident. I was put to lie on a hard surface in case I had a back injury. Someone asked me a phone number of anyone I might want to notify. I asked about Karen but no one knew anything. My parents, in-laws and their minister arrived.

I found myself in a hospital room. I still had no idea where I was. A black man in the other bed advised me to do all I can to make sure I never have a stroke. I tried to get a look out of the window to get an idea where I was.

I saw that I was high up, on the seventh floor it turns out. I recognized the cylindrical library building of Canisius College at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Main Street in Buffalo. I was at ECMC, Erie County Medical Center, in Buffalo. We were taken here because this is the hospital which specializes in trauma.

I knew that I was basically all right. Half of my face had felt warm because I was bleeding. I was battered pretty good and had lost some blood, but it probably wasn't too serious, I was told.

A nurse came in and told me that the doctors wanted to talk to me. I knew that it was about Karen. When they walked in, I could tell by the looks on their faces that the news was not going to be good.

There was severe pressure inside her skull from the swelling of her brain. I think they said they had drilled a hole in her skull to try to relieve the pressure. They said it was probable that blood could not get to her brain due to the swelling. The news about her vital signs was not good and she was showing little sign of brain activity at all. There was still more, for one thing all the ribs on one side of her body were broken in the crash.

We were allowed to see her. She was on life support and the machine was breathing for her. It was determined that there was no chance of her regaining brain activity. I was asked to sign a paper giving permission to turn off the life support system.